The Opposite of Hallelujah (9 page)

Aside from the first-day-of-school thing, a lot of girls
in my position would’ve dressed up to the nines in the hopes that their ex-boyfriends might see them and instantly regret their hasty decisions to break up, but that wasn’t my style. First of all, I was so angry with Derek I didn’t want to get back together with him; I just wanted him to drop off the face of the earth so that I could forget he ever existed. Second of all, I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of thinking I tried to make myself look extra beautiful just for his benefit. Third of all, I’d briefly considered it, but I knew it wouldn’t work.

I did put on some makeup, though. There wasn’t any reason to show up looking like I’d just emerged from a coffin. I did have a little bit of vanity.

Just as I was leaving my bedroom, I heard Reb honk from the end of the driveway. As I bounded out the front door and down the driveway, she started to pull away.

“Hey!” I cried out. “I’m on time!”

She stopped and I got in on the passenger side. Reb looked at me and grinned. “Just checking to see if you were paying attention.”

“What
happened
?” Erin asked, pouncing on me at my locker.

“It’s over, can we please not talk about the ‘why’ part and focus instead on the ‘what now’ part?” I pleaded. “Like, what do I do
now
to ensure that people aren’t laughing at me behind my back for all eternity?”

“Hell if I know. This all could’ve been avoided if you’d just broken up with him first, like I told you to.” Erin shook her head. “Why didn’t you call me back last night?”

“To avoid this exact conversation,” I said.

“Ease up, Erin,” Reb said. “I know this is hard to understand, but this situation isn’t actually about you.”

“Oh shut up,” Erin said, but lightly. The three of us were constantly sniping at each other, but always out of love. Well, almost always out of love.

“Let’s get to class, the bell’s going to ring in about five seconds,” I said. We had our first class, Advanced French IV, together. It was the only high-level course Reb was enrolled in, but Erin and I were both AP-track students, so we had most of our classes together. Reb kicked our asses in French, though.

We had the same French teacher as the past year, so we generally knew what to expect, but Madame Hubert was in an especially foul mood that morning. None of us was really
thrilled
about having to sit in a stuffy classroom speaking another language at eight in the morning, but she was pretty fired up about something. She snapped at Reb, Erin, and me for being late, even though the bell didn’t ring until after we’d dropped into our seats, and almost broke the projector screen by pulling on it too hard. I heard someone whispering in the back that Madame and her husband were getting a divorce, but I had no idea how they could have known that. Whatever it
was, Madame was totally losing it, and I texted as much to Reb, who looked at me from the other side of the room and nodded.

About halfway through class, as Madame was lecturing us in rapid French about the Impressionist movement (Advanced French IV had a serious French culture component) and clicking through slides so quickly it was hard to know which one she was talking about, the door swung open and a new boy strode in.

New Boy was average height, well muscled but not too thick, with dark blond hair that he wore longish, but not rock-star long—more like teen-heartthrob long. The room was dark, so I couldn’t make out much more than that. He paused at the door and glanced around for a second, finally locating Madame at the back of the class, still clicking furiously through slides. I rubbed my eyes and yawned.

New Boy walked up to Madame and handed her his tardy slip, which she took with a tortured sigh. “Pah-well Sob—”

“Pavel,”
he said. “The ‘w’ makes a ‘v’ sound.”

“Sorry,” Madame said in French. If there was anything she understood, it was the importance of proper pronunciation. “And how do you say your last name?”

“
Sob-
chak,” he said. “S-o-b-c-z-a-k.”

“
Sob
-chak,” she repeated. “Okay, Pawel. Take an empty seat.”

He gave her a small two-finger salute and dropped into the chair right behind me. I turned back to the slides as Madame prattled on about Monet. A minute later, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned and saw Pawel twirling a pencil between his fingers.

“Yes?” I asked.

“What the hell is going on right now?” he asked, gesturing with his pencil toward the screen.

“Madame is lecturing about Impressionism,” I said. This didn’t spark any recognition in his eyes, so I explained further. “For our cultural component.”

“Uh, what?”

“Don’t you speak French?” He at least knew enough to understand what Madame had been saying to him earlier.

“Well, yeah, but what’s a cultural component?” he asked.

I shook my head at his ignorance. “In Advanced French IV, we’re not just supposed to learn the French language anymore. Madame is going to teach us other things, but in French. And we’re going to have to write papers.”

“About what?” He looked perturbed by this information.

“French literature, French art, French history,” I said. “Didn’t they tell you that when you signed up to take the class?”

“No,” he said. “They didn’t tell me anything, they just plugged all the classes I’ve already taken into the computer and it spat out this schedule.” He handed me a folded piece of paper.

I looked over his schedule. “You’re on the AP track,” I pointed out.

“Yeah,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Super.”

I gave the paper back. “Well, why don’t you just go get it changed?”

“I probably will,” he said, his eyes drifting toward the screen at the front of the room, where Madame had just put up a picture of Monet’s
The Cliffs at Etrétat
.

I nodded, then directed my attention once again to Madame’s lecture. A couple of minutes later, I felt another tap on my shoulder.

“What?” I asked with a little glare.

“My name is Pawel,” he said, extending a hand for me to shake.

I took it and smiled, feeling a little guilty for snapping at him. “Caro,” I said.

“Cool.” He dropped my hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“You know, flirting with New Boy only works if your ex is actually there to witness it,” Erin said as we walked toward physics class, post-lunch.

“Erin, keep your voice down,” I hissed. “I wasn’t flirting
with him. He just asked me why Madame was spitting about Impressionism, and I told him.”

“He shook your hand,” Erin pointed out.

“Yeah, and it was totally hot,” I said sarcastically.

“You don’t have to get defensive,” Erin said. “It’s a good strategy. I’m just pointing out that in order for it to be effective, Derek’s going to have to see you flirting with New Boy.”

“Okay, again, I wasn’t flirting, and also, his name is not New Boy,” I said.

“Yeah, but it’s weird and foreign and instead of saying it wrong, I think I’ll just call him New Boy,” Erin said. “He
is
new, right?” Even Erin, who was highly social, didn’t know everyone at our school, which was huge, the size of a small university.

“I think so,” I said. “He’s on the AP track.”

“Hmm, interesting.”

“For now. I think he might try to have some of his classes changed. He didn’t seem thrilled about French IV’s culture component.”

“Wuss,” Erin said. “Well, whatever. And you were flirting—I saw that smile.”

“He’s cute,” I said. “And I think his eyes are green, which is rare.” I knew they were green; I noticed it right away. How could I not, with his face inches from mine?

“He
is
cute,” Erin agreed. “Funny name, though.”

“I think it’s Polish,” I said.

“Maybe I’ll just call him Polish Boy instead,” Erin said. “So where were you this weekend? I didn’t see you at all.”

“You saw me Friday,” I pointed out.

“Well, yeah, but not after that.”

“I told you, I had a family thing.”

“Oh, yeah. How’d that go?”

“Fine, I guess.”

“What was the nature of this ‘thing’?” Erin was such a busybody, always in everybody’s lives, sniffing out rumors and gossip like a truffle pig.

“No big deal. We just went into the city for a while.”

Erin narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “Why?”

“I’d rather not talk about it right now, all right?” I rubbed my forehead. “I’ve got a headache.”

“Want some aspirin?” Erin asked, riffling through her purse. She always carried a bottle of aspirin, because she got headaches a lot. Reb said it was all that gossip putting pressure on her brain.

“No, thanks, it’ll go away on its own,” I said.

“Caffeine,” Erin prescribed. “You need caffeine.”

“It’s too late to go to the vending machine now,” I said.

“Suit yourself,” Erin said.

“Hey, French Girl!” Erin and I both turned, not really because we thought
we
were being called, but because it was a bizarre way to address someone. Plus, the person said it pretty loud, startling us.

As Pawel approached, it was clear he’d been talking to me. “Hey, wait up,” he said.

“Did you just call me French Girl?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he admitted, looking sheepish. “I forgot your name. I have a terrible memory.”

“That’s okay, we’ve been calling you New Boy,” Erin told him, smiling flirtatiously. The girl was incorrigible.

“She’s been calling you that,” I said. “My name is Caro.”

“That’s right!” He snapped his fingers. “I knew it was something weird.”

“Says the guy named Paulo,” Erin said, rolling her eyes.

“Pawel,” Pawel and I said. We looked at each other and he laughed. “Jinx,” he said.

“Whatever. You two go ahead and talk amongst yourselves.
I
refuse to be late to physics.” Erin patted my shoulder and took off.

“Erin,” I said, gesturing at my retreating friend.

“I’ll probably forget that,” Pawel told me.

“Okay, so what’s up? I have to get to physics, too,” I said, gazing after Erin forlornly.

“Building 2, room 307?” Pawel asked.

“Um, yeah?” I briefly considered the possibility that Pawel might be a crazy stalker.

“Me too.” He breathed a sigh of relief. “I have no idea how to get there, and I thought maybe you’d be going in the same direction. Well, I hoped you were. Can I walk with you?”

“Well, it would be awkward for you to just follow me there,” I said, smiling. “So yeah.”

“Thanks. So what’s your real name?”

“Carolina,” I told him, picking up the pace. We would probably be late enough as it was, and I knew our physics class would be organized in lab groups of four per table. I expected Erin to save me a seat, but it might not be possible. She was quite popular in science classes and well known in the geek world for being a great partner, because she understood everything and would take the lion’s share of the work.

“I have a cousin named Carolina,” he told me. “We call her Karolcia.” He pronounced it
Ka-ROL-cha
.

“That’s way prettier than Caro,” I said.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “They both have their charms.”

“Karolcia,” I repeated. “So you’re, like, really Polish, huh?”

He laughed loudly. “As opposed to fake Polish?”

“As opposed to kind of Polish, the way I’m kind of Irish,” I said.

“My parents are from Poland,” he said. “If that’s what you mean.”

“Yeah, that’s what I would call ‘really’ Polish. Do you speak Polish?”

“Yeah. I had to do years and years of Polish school as a kid.”

“You speak Polish
and
French?”

“Well, I mean, once you know one language, it’s easier to pick up another one,” Pawel said. “And French is a breeze compared to Polish.”

“Easy A, then, I guess.”

“Yeah, pretty much.” He ran his fingers through his hair and rubbed the back of his neck.

“Stairs,” I said, opening a door to my right that led to a staircase. It was almost empty now, which meant the bell would ring any second, which it did. “Damn.”

“You care about being late?” Pawel asked, sounding surprised. He had this lazy, casual way about him that suggested he didn’t take boundaries like schedules and school bells all that seriously.